52 New Recipes | Pasta, tortillas, and tacos
This week I tried three new things (which makes up nicely for the several weeks this year when I didn't try a new recipe!)
On Monday, Sonia and Zoe and their friend helped me make a pasta dish from Budget Bytes.
It was a perfect recipe for newish kid cooks to make, and the girls all liked it.
The only thing they'd change is to chop the spinach up a bit before adding it in because it tended to clump together and then you'd get a very spinach-heavy bite, with other bites having no spinach at all.
Ok! Then yesterday I tried making corn tortillas. I'd say they were better than what you can buy at the store (much less cardboard-y), but a little dense.
The recipe said they should bubble a bit, but mine didn't really bubble. Which makes me think perhaps my dough was too stiff?
I'll probably give them another go.
And my third new recipe was a chicken taco filling from a library Cook's Illustrated magazine. This was fine, but I think I like my go-to chicken taco recipe a little better.
It's just a little more interestingly flavored, in my opinion.
What new recipe did you try?
I'd love to hear.
And if you have corn tortilla-making tips for me, I'm all ears.
Woah, great job making your own corn tortillas! We're in the heart of tortilla country down here, so I'm admittedly scared to make my own since they probably wouldn't compete down here!
This week we're having a fancy antipasto night. It's a meat and cheese plate with plenty of veggies. It's not a proper dinner, I guess, but it's a nice change of pace. 🙂
I love that you're using ATK/Cook's Country recipes! I almost use them exclusively in our home. I recently tried the Skillet Penne with Chicken and Broccoli. Instead of using grilled chicken, I put a couple of chicken breasts in our slow cooker with a cup of homemade vegetable broth and then shredded it. It was great! If you haven't tried it, I'd recommend it! It's in their Slow Cooker Revolution cookbook as well as a previous magazine issue of Cook's Country - the specific issue escapes me though! I try to buy them at Half Price Books to have on hand.
Aww it's so sweet that Sonia and Zoe helped with the cooking. The pasta looks delicious! I can't wait until Baby FAF cooks something for me and Mr. FAF! ^.^
For a while I have been trying to perfect butter chicken. This week I bought a butter chicken masala mix (only spices, no added junk!), and tried the recipe printed on the box. It was very simple, and quite delicious. The sauce (plenty of it) was a bit thin, so next time I may use creme fraîche instead of cream. The spice is definitely a keeper!
Did you use a tortilla press? Yours look nice! I tried to make them once but it was a bit of disaster and I never tried again.
I got Blue Apron this week and all three recipes were new to me. (Or mostly new. I've pan fried chickn breast and pork chops many times but the sides/sauces were new to me) The recipes were bulgogi beef and soba noodle stir fry, pork chops and rosemary potatoes with summer squash agrodolce, and a seared chicken and pasta salad with lemon caper sauce. All of the recipes were good enough but none of them wowed me enough to keep the recipe cards so that I could recreate the meals over and over. This not typical of my Blue Apron experience. I only buy it 2 or 3 times a year and there is ususally at least one "keeper" each time. Anyway . . .
I also made the milk chocoalte cheesecake from the Cook's Country television cookbook. It was delicious, but not my favorite cheesecake recipe.
I didn't...Cook's Illustrated recommended putting the dough between two layers of plastic and using a pie plate to flatten. It worked pretty well!
My partner makes corn tortillas all the time, and it was a bit of a learning curve in the beginning. She has learned to figure out the right amount of water based on feel, and she rests the dough before using it (for about 15 minutes, I think?). Now that she's figured it out, I find them really tasty, although still slightly denser than the store-bought.
For plastic, a heavy duty Ziplock bag with the sides cut out to make a single long piece of plastic works a lot better than plastic wrap.
Oh, thats a good tip on the ziplock bag. I think when I made them I used plastic wrap but found it difficult to work with. If I ever get ambitious again I'll give it a try.
I love Budget Bytes!
This isn't a recipe, but I gave my husband a spiralizer for Father's Day and we have loved having zoodles with spaghetti sauce all week!
We made sushi bowls this week...rice, cucumber, carrot, edamame beans, fried tofu, and canned tuna (seasoned with ginger and orange juice) topped with soya sauce and sriracha mayo. Really easy to make and tasty, and it is open to lots of variation.
How wonderful that you're experimenting with tortillas! When I was learning to make bread I tried recipes and books, but I only finally got it by reading your blog. This means that in a year or so you are going to post about how you finally mastered tortillas, and then I will learn from you, and then I will have freshly made tortillas at home. My husband is going to be so excited. 🙂
Ha, you have great faith in me. We shall see...
After my disaster, about which I posted in comments yesterday, with my pressure cooker, I tried a version of potato soup in the pressure cooker last night, so I wouldn't waste any good meat if I failed again, and it turned out perfectly. So, old recipe, but new way to make it. One of my favorite chilly evening meals was my mom's potato soup, yum. It's blazing hot outside, but it still tasted good.
Okay, I tried making authentic Guatemalan tortillas, the kind where they cook the corn in water with lime, rub off the skins, grind the kernals, make a thick dough, and slap them out by hand. The sweet Guatemalan ladies handed me a ball of dough and showed me how to slap out a tortilla and throw it on the cooking surface. I got somewhat close, but never quite got it right. It always tore just as they were saying, "There, there, you're getting it!" It took some getting used to, eating tortillas made without salt, but I actually liked them by the end of the week.
That pasta looks good. I wish my husband was more open to eating pasta, because I would totally devour that dish.
So lovely to have a success after an abject failure, isn't it?
We had my mom's potato soup last night as well. How funny!
Tortilla presses aren't very expensive and they really help. You can make a big batch and freeze them.
Looks great! I have never given tortillas a try. My fiance keeps wanting to attempt it though. Currently she has started a diet with her friends and now we have to adapt every recipe we find to fit.
Hi Kristen,
And happy Friday (here anyway) my new recipe I tried this week was a smokey lentil and chorizo soup, oh my, it was truly delicious. Just perfect for our very cool evenings we are having at the mo. Have a lovely day.
Fi
Alexandra's Kitchen blog has a good recipe for flour tortillas. I've made corn-they were OK-but I think having a press makes all the difference, especially for corn.
The flour tortillas, though!! All day, everyday.
Budget Bytes is hands down one of my favorite recipe sites. Great recipes on the site, but her background is in microbiology, and it shows in the accuracy and detail in the recipes. The book by the same name is pretty great also.
I actually made 4 this week: vegan zucchini bread, double chocolate zucchini bread (see a theme?), quinoa black bean/corn bowls and Asian Mahi Mahi. I've been trying to make one new one a week too, but have often missed, so this week makes up for it 🙂
I tried Moroccan chicken with apricots in the crockpot from ATK family cookbook and it was amazzzzing!!! Made it with couscous and kids all gobbled it up. Will def make it again!
Despite the fact that I make almost everything from scratch, I have never wanted to try making tortillas. Because every time I've made something that's been purchased previously, I can't go back to the store version, and tortillas are one of my few remaining convenience foods.
As for new stuff . . . I made the yellow cake recipe (I think it's actually called "Best Birthday Cake") from Smitten Kitchen today for my son's 5th birthday. Well, half the recipe, anyway, which is all I needed for three small people and me. I never make anything but chocolate cake, but he wanted vanilla cake (with vanilla frosting, whipped cream, strawberries, AND vanilla ice cream right on top of the cake--at least he's specific) and that was a good recipe. It reminded me of pound cake, which is never a bad thing. Plus, it was easy enough that I could make it with all three of my small sons "helping." Winner. If you're going to bother with non-chocolate cake, that is. 🙂
I have had a few disasters with tortillas, but once you get them right they are oh so good! I have found the secret is a good ratio of lard to flour- I use butter. Makes them really soft and tasty, while still holding together well.
I finally made a good foccacia last night, it is Budget Bytes recipes and is no-knead. I have had the most success with no-knead recipes, including yours, which is depressing when I consider all that time and effort I have spent kneading bread. So thank you for getting me on the path of no-knead 🙂
A+ corn pun at the end, well done.
Hahaha, I didn't even notice I did that. I must be a natural. 😉